The Chamber has been quiet for some time now, a sparse few residents keeping company with the forest’s wildlife and its many ghosts. When I was a child, the steady strum of the panther-king’s heartbeat would lull me to sleep. Now, nearly a century later, it’s a silent shell of its former self, but, it’s still home.

I wake at the sound of stone scraping the earth. Rolling over to my side, I take a few seconds to stretch out my cramped muscles. The nights are cool in the Chamber, even in the height of summer, and I slept hard last night, curled into a tight ball in one of my favorite hollows. I roll toward the opening, and stick just enough of my head out to search the clearing a hundred feet or so below, whiskers twitching. At first I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, the clearing below devoid of life save a handful of small birds. Sniffing, I narrow my focus on their excited chatter. You have to be patient with the smaller songbirds. They’re not as intelligent as the corvids, though most are just as fierce as the raptors. Something about particularly scrumptious beetles someone had been unearthing in the forest … I can hear rock being pushed along the ground again and I lean further out from the tree, gripping the edges of the hollow with small black paws, my bushy tail held out behind me for balance. Someone comes into view a moment later, nudging a stone across the ground to join several others.

I frown. I’ve not seen the stallion before, that I can recall at least, nor do I recognize the spiraling pattern of rock he’s building down below. Resisting the urge to use my magic to satisfy my curiosity and potentially give my presence away, I yawn and stretch again before settling back down into a comfortable position, chin resting on the worn edge of the hollow, content to watch the unusual scene play out. It’s the most exciting thing that’s happened since I threw those fish at that sour-faced queen.

Exciting may have been an overstatement. I doze off.

This time I wake to the smell of smoke and the unmistakable roar of flame. There was a time this tree burned unnaturally, without ceasing, without succumbing, and for a moment I think the magic has, for whatever reason, returned. However, a quick glance locates the rock-pushing piebald down below, his form slightly distorted by the heat coming off the fire, obviously admiring his handiwork. I shout a string of obscenities down at him but I am sure it comes across as nonsensical squirrel jabber. A spark catches on one of my whiskers, singeing it and spurring me into action. I need to get out of this tree without expending too much energy. I am a seasoned magician but fire and I are begrudging acquaintances. While I’m familiar with jumping bodies to travel, but the inferno must have scared away the birds I’d spotted earlier and I’m loathe to use the stranger’s body, even for a moment. It’s not impossible but it’s more difficult to jump into the bodies of equines who have been touched by Beqanna’s magic, and equally uncomfortable to leave them.

So, I run straight down the trunk toward the fire, momentarily disappearing into it. There’s the familiar drain of energy as I grasp the flames immediately around me, wrestling them into submission and shaping them into two small wings. It only takes a few moments, but the sensitive pads of my feet are burned nearly to the bone when I push off the trunk and take flight, a plump black squirrel on fire wings who scolds the fire-setter all the way down. I swoop past his head, my paws numb with pain, ignoring the rosetted girl who emerges from the forest with a sly smile on her lips and firelight in her eyes as I head for the lake that shares the clearing. Above the shallows I release the hold I have on the wings and they disappear in a puff of smoke, plummeting me beneath the water's cold surface.